Postgraduate Students Academic Writing Skills: The Needs for Supervision and Self-esteem

Abstract

The study aimed to understand how supervision and self-esteem influence academic writing skills among postgraduate students in Malaysian public universities. Academic writing skills of postgraduate students, particularly PhD students, are essential for them to conduct their research effectively due to the high demands placed on the quality of their study. It is beneficial to understand postgraduate students' self-esteem as well as their supervisor’s support in order to boost their academic writing skills. A quantitative cross-sectional survey research design was used in this study. Data were gathered through the use of a survey questionnaire that was distributed to 171 postgraduate students (PhD students). Non-probability sampling (convenient sampling) method was used to select the participants for this study. SPSS version 26 was used to analyse the data. An investigation of the relationship between supervision, self-esteem, and perceived academic writing skills was carried out using Pearson correlation analysis and linear regression. Both supervision and self-esteem were shown to have a moderate correlation with perceived academic writing skills. When compared to supervision, self-esteem is a slightly stronger factor for perceived academic writing skills. The implications of this study can provide direction to those involved in developing the most appropriate strategies to improve the writing skills of postgraduate students. Researchers suggested that more variables in the literature to be studied in future research, which could lead to a better result. Furthermore, future researchers can use a mixed methods approach to gain a deeper understanding of postgraduate students' conditions in order to boost their writing skills effectively.